In the field of surgery, various information technology systems are known, and a wide variety of data is collected during the course of a given surgical procedure. However, to date, the data that is collected during surgical procedures is not utilized to its full potential. Indeed, in the field of orthopedic surgery, for example, many compact disks (CDs) containing surgical data are generated and never used at all, except perhaps for archive purposes. Additionally, many types of information pertaining to a given patient's surgical procedure presently are stored only in a surgeon's brain and thus are not available for the benefit of others. Therefore, there is a need in the art for a system and method of collecting surgical data that will allow multiple surgeons, patients, hospitals, medical companies, and other users to realize the value of such information.